Jab all freshers MUST get before starting at uni
JuLIA STyLeS felt the normal pang of motherly concern when she got a call from her daughter emily saying she had a migraine, but she wasn’t overly worried. emily, 19, Julia’s elder daughter, often suffered from debilitating headaches, but a couple of painkillers and a good night’s sleep were usually enough to make her feel a lot better.
‘She sounded pretty upbeat when we spoke on the phone and when she texted me later she even wrote “I’ll live!”, which was a bit of a family joke whenever one of us was ill,’ says Julia, 49, a teacher from Buckingham.
‘emily was staying with her boyfriend Ben and his family in Padbury, the next village to ours. I knew they’d look after her as well as we would have had she been at home. I just told her to get some rest and I’d see her the next day.’
But when Julia saw her daughter the following morning, on New year’s eve 2013, she was unconscious and being treated by a team of paramedics frantically trying to tackle a deadly meningitis B infection.
‘emily had gone to bed feeling a bit poorly, but by the time she woke up she was delirious and incoherent,’ says Julia, who lives with her husband Peter, 52, a senior project manager for a marketing database company, and their other daughter Sophie, now 19.
‘When emily tried to get out of bed, she collapsed unconscious. Peter and I raced over to be with her, but there was nothing we or anyone else could do.’
emily was airlifted to John radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, but never regained consciousness. Her family made the heartbreaking decision to switch off her life support machine on New year’s day 2014.
‘While most families were celebrating the New year, we were mourning the loss of our beautiful daughter,’ says Julia.
‘It all happened so quickly, and her symptoms of a headache and nausea were so innocuous we had no reason to suspect meningitis. She never developed the rash so many people associate with the disease.’
Julia is campaigning for greater awareness of all strains of meningitis, particularly among teenagers and young adults, who are the second most at-risk group (after children under five).
ANd THERE is concern that this older group is failing to take up the offer of a free vaccine introduced to combat the spread of meningitis. The jab protects against four strains of meningitis: A,C,y and W. The W strain is particularly aggressive, killing one in ten people who contract it, and is on the rise. The number of cases has increased by 809 per cent since 2009.
Between 2009 and 2010, the W strain accounted for fewer than 2 per cent of meningitis cases, but it now accounts for a quarter.
The number of deaths has risen, too, from four between 2009 and 2012 to 24 in 2013-14 (the last year figures are available). Survivors can be left with life-changing disabilities.
young people are more likely to carry the bacteria that cause meningitis. One in four 15 to 19year-olds are believed to carry the bacteria in the back of their throats, compared with one in ten of the general UK population.
And while most people carrying the bacteria don’t fall ill, when they pass it on to someone who is susceptible — by coughing, sneezing or kissing — that person becomes ill very quickly.
young people are particularly vulnerable, especially if they’re going to university, because they mix with many more new people — increased social interaction means the bacteria can be passed on more easily.
‘More than 12 per cent of all cases occur in the 14 to 24 age group, with first-year students at particular risk,’ says Liz Brown, chief executive of the charity Meningitis Now.
A spike in the infection prompted the Government to introduce an emergency immunisation programme in 2015.
The vaccine was first offered to 17 and 18-year-olds in their final year of school, as well as to those aged 19 to 25 heading to university for the first time, before being rolled out to include 14 to 16-year-olds (replacing the meningitis C vaccine in the spring).
Last month, following concerns about disappointing uptake, Public Health england urged students to have the vaccine.
figures published in June in GP magazine showed just 35 per cent of those eligible in england for the vaccine had it.
With uptake expected to be similar across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, up to 250,000 of this year’s intake of half a million university students could be putting their lives at risk.
‘It’s vital students are not complacent about the threat of meningitis,’ says Liz Brown. ‘We urge them to have this life-saving vaccine.’
Shamez Ladhani, a paediatric infectious diseases consultant at St George’s Hospital, London, and consultant epidemiologist at Public Health england, says that ‘older teenagers are traditionally a very difficult group to vaccinate’.
‘At school, they line up with their friends and are vaccinated one by one, but in this case, they have to make an appointment and visit the doctor’s surgery of their own accord. They’re simply not used to looking after their own health. They don’t consider it a priority.’
WHeN she died, emily Styles was looking forward to taking up her place at Winchester university that September to follow her dream of becoming a special needs teacher.
‘She’d been working as a teaching assistant in a local special school, gaining experience and saving money for university,’ says Julia. ‘She loved working with children and really wanted to feel she was making a difference to their lives.
‘We didn’t only lose the most wonderful daughter and sister to this dreadful disease, the wider community missed out on everything she had to offer.
‘If there was a room full of people and someone was feeling sad or left out, emily would seek them out and try to make them feel better.
‘We’re utterly heartbroken by her loss and hope that by sharing her story, more students will take up the offer of this vaccine. Meningitis is a deadly disease that young people need to take very seriously.’